THE TURKEY SHOOT
Small town Saskatchewan
raising money for the curling rink
Targets fifty feet away
and old bent-sight 22’s to shoot
The trick to bringing a turkey home
was not how well at the bullseye shot
but how fast you learned that life
is sometimes three inches down
and two to the left of where you aim
November 22, 2017
RED RANCH BARN
Look how swallows thread the sky
B.J. Buckley
Watching the swoop and loop
from the window of the loft again
would mend some tears in the years
MODERN TIMES
Between the horse and the tractor
falls the shadow of too much light
Molecules molested day and night
and the milky way has turned
from whole to skim to gone
WHAT WE DID AT COUNTRY SCHOOL
The garter snake
is colorful and kind
it means no harm to man
In venomous snakes the young
are more dangerous than the old
The garter snakes have found
it is the same with man
CANADA GEESE
The Veeing geese fly freer now
across the autumn sky
No longer do they gorge
on my father’s golden grain
No longer do I lie in wait
twelve gauge at the ready
to bring them in for dinner
THINGS I DID, BUT DON’T RECOMMEND
#233 – THE LONGNECK LOB
In Saskatchewan
there aren’t many games
you can play outdoors all year
A favorite of our prairie youth
was tossing bottles at roadside signs
It’s not as simple as it sounds
there’s height and speed and distance
added degree of difficulty for the driver
left handed over roof one eye on the road
All in the wrist at 60 miles per hour
Let it fly forty feet before the sign
with just enough oomph and arc
to float to shattering conclusion
and cheers and beers all round
There is still some question
as to whether aim improved
as time and beer went by
WATER TO WATER
See the old farmer
sitting by the sea
Born on the prairie
it was water to dust
Dust and dust
and praying for rain
and shovelling snow
and cursing hail
And carrying life
up the hill in a pail
And always trying to get back
TECHNOLOGY
The day breathed in
and the day breathed out
After lunch my father took a nap
– the horses had to rest
By supper time they were fed
fed and brushed and thanked
And then the tractors came
– and tractors do not nap
Not content with that small theft
they soon grew lights and stole the dark
He fed them gas, they pulled the plow
But not once, one to the other
did they ever speak of love
PULLING PIPE
Trouble down the well
and me, my dad, and my brothers
are Texas roughnecks
pulling spinning and stacking pipe
pipe and rod and “Careful dammit!
If you drop that rod the well is shot”
We’re Red Adair, fighting a fire
we’re wet and muddy and cold and mad
and we’ve got to get it done by dark
The gold down there’s not black but red
an iron rich sea hiding away
from the pulling power of the prairie sun
Looking back fifty years from a poet’s perch
I pull
spin and stack
metaphor and meaning
Back then it was just men
doing what they had to do
and white faced cattle waiting
MATH
If a train leaves Moose Jaw
heading west at the speed of first memory
Engine, cars, and caboose
zebraing by behind a snowfence
smoke billowing back over its shoulder
And another leaves, traveling east
from my writing of it now
When will they meet
at the small town of Courval
and your reading of the page